Another Cinderella
by Gigi the Dancer
Summary: the story seen from the eyes of the 'fairy godmother'...And yes there is some cheesy romance novel influence


Author's note: I was bored on Thursday and decided to write and this kept going for a while. i was just telling myself a story to pass the time, (I need to get a voice recorder) and this was the result.

"Do you find being an upstairs maid hard?" asked the prince the second time I met him. I had been an upstairs maid for nearly three years now and I didn't really find the job tiring just extremely boring. What i had been aspiring to was actually a step down the ladder. I really wanted to cook. I wanted to be an undercook in the royal kitchens, or even a taster a most very dangerous job.

The Prince when he was not off on a training mission or going out partying with his friends was an insomniac. He had been into battle quite a few times and had nightmares about it. He would stay up for hours on end staring into the fire or managing his household accounts for his small estate out near the seashore. But there is only so much math one can do beofre you run out and the fire burned low and so he would ring for some more and I happened to be the one to bring it up.

I entered into a friendly relationship with him after that question and we still are friends. When he fell in love with a very sought after maiden, I was the one to help him compose his ode to her beauty. It compared her to food, of course it would with an aspiring cook writing it, but it was a new and exciting style to woo someone with. And the girl liked it, being a plump person and indeed a l;over of food. Unfortunately though her father chose her husband and the poor prince was heartbroken.

He still was looking for a woman to woo and wed but he was slow and reluctant on it after his initial defeat. He was ready to go back to the drawing board when he had to ride out with his troop and defeat some rogues and maurauders on the fringes of our kingdom.

And when he came back I myself was contemplating my leaving the royal household. Indeed I felt slightly insulted. I had asked the Head of Household Maurice to let me move into an open spot in the kitchen. It was a lower position but I reasoned that if I took the position of under cook then there would be efficiency and delicious food instead of bumbling cooks burning food and causing pandemonium.

Maurice saw my point but how would he fill the position I would leave he asked. And I said move all the maids up a spot. It was tradition that once you worked your way from scullery maid to kitchen maid to below stairs maid to serving maid to upstairs maid but he said I would better serve in the position I was in. The next in line to be promoted was Helga, an efficient if clumsy tongued girl and he wouldn't allow such a tongue tied woman to be moved upstairs.

And so as I sat up with the Prince one night listening to him describe his adventures and contemplate schemes to find a lovely girl to marry, I was contemplating leaving.

I never mentioned my plan to the Prince, he would never allow me to leave, he had grown to attached to me and he hadn't even slept with me.

I went to a job fair in the week before my contract at the Palace was up. I searched for people hiring cooks, and cookmaids but nothing of interest appeared. Mostly they wanted an upstairs maid or a nursemaid neither of which position I was interested in.

Then one day that week I was at the market with Cherie, my best friend, a serving maid who was madly in love with a middle class shopkeeper. We were out for a stroll through the flower vendors and the fruit sellers when I caught word of someone looking for a cook.

And I went to the household of the Lady de Haudenma and asked for the position. The lady was a plump woman with very bad taste as far as I could tell. Her last cook had run away with her lover and had stolen a very large ham intended for a party. The woman was in rush for a cook, she was invited to a bunch of parties this week she said, gesturing to the delicately carved vanity overloaded with cream colored envelopes.

I was hired and next week when the Royal Household and it's Royal King and Queen and the Princess and the Prince went through the line up of servants new and old I wasn't there.

Cherie told me that the Prince asked about me right away. He was quite upset that I wasn't there and when Maurice told him I had left the household he was quite overcome with curiousity.

"Why?" He wanted to know and of course Maurice would not tell him

Due to this episode, everyone now thought I had slept with him and that he was upset because I had married or something. His mother even asked him about it over tea the next day. "You haven't slept with her?"

"No."

"then what is the big deal?"

" You know the poem that I wrote about Lady Lucy?"

"yes it was very beautiful."

"She helped me write it and she helped me write the speech I gave at the Yule ball last year."

'Ah. So she was smart."

"Well, yeah I guess so. I just...I don't know.. Why wouldn't she say anything?"

"She may have felt she needed to move. Sometimes people need to do something different after a while, maybe she fell in love or maybe she was lured by the money."

"You know we pay the maids the most money out of all the households in the kingdom."

"She was very beautiful she might have become someone's mistress or moved abroad"

"Yeah but who would know where she went?"

"Ask her friends."

And so that's what he did. One day in the heat of making dinner for 300 the prince strolled inside the kitchen, all dressed up in his royal dress, complete with crown and asked where I had went. Of course no one answered him except at dinner, when Helga brought out his soup and told him where I had gone.

He then had to go ask Helga advice on going to a noble's household and asking to speak with their cook. She laughed at him full in the face and told him that he should dress down and pretend to be my lover or an undercook who wanted advice on something.

And so she sent him to my new household the next day bearing a box of pastries and a loaf of bread, with a badly scrawled note written by Cherie, saying I was missed by all.

The new household was quite small. The Lord had died fours years before, his daughter being forced into servitude, as she tried to gain the love of her stepmother and stepsisters.

The Lord's daughter was my compatriot as we settled into routine. She acted as an upstairs maid, doing all the housework related to that position. She was called Cinderella by her stepsisters Maude and Violet. They were spoiled young women and they snubbed her completely. They were in fact quite jealous of her, for her beauty, grace and love.

She had grown up an only child.She had been spoiled by her father, who fearing she needed motherly guidance married the stepmother. The stepsisters had never known their father and were quite jealous of the attention Cinderella got from hers. Cinderella didn't mind sharing her papa and thought that it was great to have a family. And for while it was. But as Cinderella related to me, the stepmother was bitter to her because she blames her for the death of her father.

And so the stepsisters followed their mother's example and so Cinderella was treated unkindly and was deprived of the love of her family. Cinderella was not ground underfoot or a docile slave girl, she was a love starved orphan, in spite of having a beautiful family.

And so I wanted Cinderella to meet the Prince. When he showed up at my back clad in ripped breeches and scuffed shoes, holding a box of pastries in his arms and a loaf of bread, I could have fallen in love. Instead I set a pot of tea on the fire and brought out a jar of fresh jam.

As I related Cinderella's story to him he was shocked. I told him that she was really the daughter of the late Lord and that she was so willing to please that she played the maid to her sisters. And at the moment she was upstairs helping them dress their hair and curling it.

And I told him all about how I had moved from the castle because I had been denied a place in the kitchen. I told him how I had been brought up with expectations to cook. My father had been a cook in the household of the Grand Duke and that it extended into time unknown. And my mother had been a cookmaid at the best pastry shop in the city. And that I had been brought up to handle hot food, and think that a well made meal was like god's gift.

And the Prince said he understood and that he would like permission to visit me and I was quite flattered. I told him he could come anytime and sample my cooking, in the purely platonic way of course. He smiled at me his teeth flashing brightly in the dim glow of the kitchen.

"You really must meet Ella, though. She is the most charming girl you will ever meet. And she's nobility too." I said pouring him another cup.

The Prince laughed. It was so good to hear him laugh. He sat there a long time with me gossiping about the people in the palace and telling me of his intentions to have a grand ball. He had decided that he wanted to meet someone lovely. And his mother had suggested a ball.

"Suggested? Really?" I said smiling at him.

"Well, not exactly. She told me this when I was being fitted for my new uniform that she was planning a ball and they could use the measurements to make my new dress clothes."

"Ah. "

"She was very casual about it. And you know my mother, she never lets an opportunity for a party slip by. This one is going to be the nights aorund my birthday."

"Well you must get me an invitation for Ella, the poor dear. I don't think she's been allowed to a ball in ages."

" I am sure her family will take her."

I shook my head. " from what I know of her she adores dancing and she always is. She is perfectly suited to going to a ball and she loves hearing stories of them. She eats them up like children do candy. She hasn't danced with a man in years, probably since her father died."

"How old is she?"

"probably around my age. 17 or 18 or so."

"Well, yes I will get you one. But you must come to the ball too."

"What? I don't know about balls..."

" Here, think about it. If you let Ella go alone what do you think will happen? She will either meet some handsome cad and get compromised or she will meet her stepfamily and be completely humiliated in front of everyone without anyone to hold her on the ride home."

" I see your point, but what would I wear?"

"What will she wear? Does she have a ballgown?"

"Mmm.. good point. You just have to throw a knot in my plans."

"You know what? When the Princess goes through her closet I will get Cherie to bring you two some clothes."

" Are you sure? Well think about it. The styles are about to change in the spring it is the end of the winter now, and my sister throws dresses out like a thirsty horse drinks water."

"Okay. That's great. I can't wait. When is your birthday, again?"

"you have lived in the royal household for how long and you don't know my birthday?"

" I never mark the date only the decorations, my lord."

"I see. Well it's in the middle of March."

"I better head back, I have some royal duties to perform." he said as he stood up and brushed bread crumbs off his lap.

"I am so disappointed now. You missed Ella. You must come back sometime and meet her. "

"I will."

"Good bye, my lord."

"good bye."

As soon as he left, wheeling his horse around in front of the kitchen window and waving Cinderella slipped down the back stairs. "is he gone?"

"What?" I asked staring at her dumbly.

"Your lover is he gone?"

"That wasn't my lover!" I cried in frustration.

"Well, that's what Violet said. And last time the cook had a lover over, I walked in on them doing loverly things._That's_ why I stayed upstairs with Violet so long."

She said. "I didn't realize you wanted me to meet him."She said trying to soothe my outburst of angry tears.

"Of course I wanted you to meet him. That was the Prince."

"What?" She asked confuzzled.

"The prince, from the palace, was here to drop off these pastries."

"The prince is your lover?"

"No he only said that so that he wouldn't embarrass the household by coming here as a Prince to see the cook."

"But he's not your lover."

"No." Is aid shaking my head. I sighed and drank the rest of my tea, trying to regain my composure. "you want some pastries? They're from the Royal kitchen."

Ella smiled and took one.

The invitations for the ball were sent out the next day actaully with the Prince bringing ours personally to the back door. And again he missed meeting Cinderella because she was off on a wild goose chase for a magical salve to bring youth back again.

And the next week Cherie came by with a box of makeup and a bag of dresses. As we tried on each dress, I noticed how skinny Ella was. She had big breasts which made you not realize that she was quite tiny everywhere else. I needed to plump her up thought but meanwhile the dresses could be padded. And The dresses were absolutely gorgeous.

The Princess really knew style and fashion. And these dresses were only worn once or twice or three times if she was lucky. Princesses can never be seen in the same ballgown and she was no exception. Although she had been abroad for a while and so could have probably worn some more than once.


End file.
